


Listen - Series 8 - Episode Four (Meta/Review)

by Boji



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Review, Meta, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:06:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji





	Listen - Series 8 - Episode Four (Meta/Review)

  
This is a superb episode, and one which works on multiple levels. Plus, obliquely, I believe it also nods to one of the great Sci-Fi films of all time: _The Forbidden Planet._ : _"And yet always in my mind I seem to feel the creature is lurking somewhere close at hand, sly and irresistible and only waiting…_ (Quote from the film)

The episode opens on soliloquy. Solitude. Silence. And, we are entreated to _Listen._ The doctor is talking to himself. Haunting the TARDIS. Striding, pacing, muttering, cross-referencing. And he can't shake the feeling of being watched, of not being alone. This episode is terrifying, but not for the reasons you think it might be. It's also wonderful, but again not necessarily when stared at head on.

On one level _Listen_ is a hunt for a classic childhood monster. We had monsters in the cupboard explored when Eleven met George in 'East-Enders' land _aka_ in _Night Terrors_. Here we meet Rupert Pink and the archetypal monster under childhood's bed. On another level this episode is an exploration of fear and to how experiences shape us. And on yet another level it's a rom-com; "The perils of dating a time-traveller." What is particularly brilliant is that its non-linearity and the meld of drama, and horror-lite, mesh so well with the comedic and somewhat romantic plot thread which bookends as well as weaves through the story.

The main narrative - the _A_ plot, if you will - is propelled by the Doctor's fear and belief _(I won't call it superstition)_ that something, some invisible being, is with him always. He believes that when he feels fear, and heightened awareness, it's because there is some other presence, being, or alien, with him in the TARDIS. Aside from Sexy of course. So, we see the Doctor's fear of being alone, of being the last living creature at the end of the universe. It's primal, universal and very human, albeit for a Time Lord. And (as we later learn) it's something which has marked him all along.

But, the subtext. Oh, the subtext.

For the children watching along at home, Steven Moffat explores what happens to the Doctor when he travels alone (waiting from one Wednesday to the next Wednesday) before coming back to cajole and pester Clara back into the TARDIS. He gets cranky. He imagines things and he talks to himself. Watch that as a viewer of a certain age and it's inescapable that Clara is suddenly cast in the role of daughter _(carer, as he named her two episodes ago?)_ for someone who could easily be her ageing father. In fact, that allusion of Doctor as aged father is more than a little overt in the scene where he asks Clara if she wants him to ask Danny what his prospects are. The Doctor: Long widowed, alone, and possibly losing his faculties. That is the real subtextual horror at the heart of this episode. A far, far, scarier thing for grown-ups to watch than ghosts and non corporeal, invisible aliens.

Do I think there was a monster? Ah well… Yes. And No.

On first viewing I was convinced that all there was, outside a crashed vessel on a dead planet, was depleting oxygen and atmosphere. The pressure of a vacuum. On re-watch I'm convinced that although the Doctor may be a mad bastard, out to satisfy his curiosity and face his terror head on, something _is_ out there. Something was under the red knitted blanket on Rupert's bed. Something changed shape and grew in stature as the Doctor and Clara (or is that just the Doctor?) entered Rupert's room. Here, Moffat places clues just as carefully as Clara positions toy soldiers. From the psychic paper, to the touch of an index finger that sends Rupert off to sleep. Dad skills? Or telepathic control? What if, like the scientist (Dr. Morbius) in _The Forbidden Planet_ the monster under the bed is the monster from the Doctor's Id? What if the Doctor is leaking psychic energy? Could some telepathic creature, like a Tenza, have picked up on the Doctor's subconscious fears and taken form, shape, and self-determination?

_That_ is my current take on the monster under the bed. That it didn't exist when a dainty hand first gripped a boy's ankle, but that _something_ tapped into the Doctor's awesome subconscious (after the other Time-lords left the universe? When the TARDIS was infected by psychic pollen?) and has been travelling with him ever since. And, in travelling it has also left its mark though-out time, space, dreams and nightmares.

If the horror thread from the episode is inspired by 1950's vintage sci-fi (in turn apparently inspired by Shakespeare) there's also another nod to classic film and Sci-Fi in a man's name. Orson Wells. I couldn't help but grin at the idea Steven Moffat named a character after the twenty-three water wells his ancestor dug, while in the army. But, in truth, if the pun is anywhere it's silent and unspoken. Orson Wells dramatised _War of the Worlds_ , H.G. Wells tale of alien invasion for radio in 1938 which created [panic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_%28radio_drama%29). From Martians to Gallifreyans to Daleks and other, there's a long history of Earth's alien invasion. And then there's the fact that the nod to Orson Wells may also be a silent reference to _Rosebud_. What haunts Kane is the memory of a childhood sleigh. What haunts the Doctor, is a half-remembered nightmare from childhood.

In the vein of classic children's literature, _Doctor Who_ (at least Nu-WHo) has been about teaching children the harsh realities of life. Marriage is scary, but wonderful with compromise. Parents die. Babies are lost to their mothers. Adoption can be amazing. Your boyfriend can grow and change and not love you any more etc. etc. Here? Well the subtext is clearly telling children that older people (their grandparents; their parents) never truly stop being afraid of things, even if they're not afraid of the 'lovely' dark. You don't grow out of fear, so the Doctor tells us. Though, if you're lucky you can use it to help you grow... up.

What is enchanting about text and subtext here is how it both reveals Moffat's subconscious fears for the show, and Twelve, yet offers up a fantastic solution. At the tail end of the episode, when a young Time-lord (to be) lies shaking and shivering in his bed, Clara's reaches out literally and figuratively and Steven Moffat shows each child watching that this 'grey stick insect' of a Doctor was once a little boy, just like them. Scared of failing tests, just like them. Steven Moffat reminds them that the Doctor grew up to be amazing, to use his brain, not his brawn. He grew up to be clever and wonderful and wise. If there was a child watching who, unlike Clara, still couldn't _see_ the Doctor after Eleven became Twelve, I assume now they can. It's a brilliant dramatic device and use of time-travel. Also truly interesting is the way Clara is the one now carrying the emotional tone of the show, the heart of it if you will. Amelia Pond/Karen Gillan carried it in Matt Smith's first series. Smith, as the Doctor, carried it to Trenzelore. Now it's Jenna who's given those big emotional moments to play.

Is this simply because the Doctor now proclaims he's not a hugger?

I'd say it's because Peter Capaldi, however brilliant, may be harder for children to relate to. Brilliant, acting wise though he is. Superbly, in the first part of this episode Capaldi manages to project a real sense of menace, through grimace and body language. When the Doctor's alone, and immediately after he asks Clara to come exploring, he looks dangerous and that carries through until the moment he opens the crashed ship's airlock and almost gets himself killed.

Fear is a superpower. Fear is like a companion. Perfect metaphors for the show and; life. All adults are shaped by events in their childhood, especially by intense ones. Those we remember, and those we've forgotten once they fade into a fragment of a half remembered dream. This Moffat, and the Doctor, tell younger viewers. And, they also get a glimpse of the fact that you can never go home as an adult to find your childhood home exactly as you remember it. By the time the Doctor returns to his, he's an old man walking across a desert wasteland. His life (and the ongoing time-war) may be a metaphor for that barren desert, but it is also a marker of longevity and change. I assume that why only the barn remains standing and the house across from the barn is no more?

Just as the characters in this episode travel back and forth along a person's timeline, so too lines of dialogue are repeated, and a sense of inevitability created. If a little boy in pyjamas hadn't waved down at Clara (in an odd, sweet, inverted Romeo and Juliet moment) would Clara have bothered to go back to that restaurant? If she hadn't felt compassion for Rupert Pink, would she have given Rupert-now-Danny a second chance? And if her possible future children (and children's children) hadn't been told bedtime stories of time and space travel, about a mad man in a blue box, would Orson Wells have grown up to be Earth's first time traveller? Would Wells have met his great, great, grandmother and been in the wrong place, at the right time travelling with a lucky charm?

Dan the soldier man. The boss of soldiers, who doesn't carry a gun. The little action figure who inspired more than one human boy to be heroic, and inspired an alien child to be amazing. There is a lovely cyclical thread running through this, everything coming back to it's beginning. Past is prologue. We're all stories.

Here Clara gets to see her story unfold into possibility as a rom-com slice of _Sliding Doors_ with a pinch of _Choose your own Adventure_. I loved the use of flashback, with Clara coming home after a disastrous date and casting her mind back to the restaurant. I love the fact that she comes home to find the TARDIS parked in her bedroom, taking up an entire corner. The scene is, of course, a nod back to the time Eleven appeared in Amy's bedroom complete with TARDIS. Then, Amy lounged on the bed and made a play for Eleven. Now, Clara curls up emotionally wounded. A lovely juxtaposition, but then Clara's written and Jenna's playing inverted reflections of earlier female characters all episode. Where River Song was a master at concealment ( _spoilers!_ ) Clara blurts out all manner of clues. Where Amy was confident, she is anything but.

Talking of mirroring, and of those much mentioned three mirrors, for all that a man may not understand the why of it Clara has a dressing table in her room. Probably a vintage piece, given the three mirrors. Companions mirror the Doctor _(Thank you, Sarah Jane Smith!)_ Three mirrors. Two companions. Three people in the TARDIS. I'd say the Doctor's preoccupation is symbolic but I'm probably reaching, for all that Orson Wells is left stranded for months in a manner which calls to mind Rory the Roman, stranded for centuries.

_Listen_ is a master-stroke of an episode. Oh, not because it's scary, which it is. Nor because it has some stupendous effects (love the pink light cast by dying sun) editing, or phenomenal acting. It's brilliant because it works on so many levels of story-telling. It is dramatic and funny. Horrific (well, a tad) and touching. It works so, so, very well as non-linear, timey-whimey, narrative. And, it works as text and metaphor.

A lovely, lovely, brilliant episode which confirms my belief that Steven Moffat can write phenomenally well. I also think he's a re-writer and that he crumbles under pressure but that's just an assumption on my part.

  



End file.
